The I-Word

The guilty pleas of Michael Cohen earlier this week immediately started a cable news torrent of discussion about the possible impeachment of Donald Trump.

Ain't gonna happen.

At least it will not happen due to Cohen's declaration on two of the eight counts to which he entered guilty pleas which had to do with the hush-money payments to a porn star and a Playboy Playmate.

According to Politico.com:

Cohen said one payment, for $150,000, was made during "summer of 2016, in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office."

The second payment, for $130,000, was made around "October of 2016, at the direction of the same candidate."

You have to be the truest of the true believers to doubt Cohen was referring to Donald Trump.

I have no doubt Michael Cohen was speaking truthfully. The Feds raided his homes and office and came away with hundreds of thousands of documents. Some of those documents probably were memos to the file about what Trump wanted Cohen to do. And at least one audio tape contains a clip of a discussion about how to make one of the payments - cash or check.

I don't know Michael Cohen, but I don't like him. When he was operating under the protection of Donald Trump the developer and big-time business macher he was a thug.

In a 2015 telephone call Cohen is heard trying to bully a reporter for the on-line news site, DailyBeast.com, out of running a story about Trump:

"Mark my words for it, I will make sure that you and I meet one day over in the courthouse and I will take you for every penny you still don't have, and I will come after your Daily Beast and everybody else that you possibly know.

"Do not even think about going where I know you're planning on going. And that's my warning for the day."

The two payments were supposedly made to keep the women quiet about alleged sexual affairs with Trump. At least one of them was made just weeks before in election day in 2016.

Let's say everything Cohen said and implied about Trump's role in the payoffs is correct.

I can remember very well Democrats saying over and over during the investigation and impeachment of Bill Clinton's activities with Monica Lewinsky in 1998 that was just about sex.

Clinton was impeached for lying about the relationship, not for the fact of it.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi made it clear she wants her caucus to stay away from the I-Word. As reported by National Review she said,

"Impeachment has to spring from something else. If and when the information emerges about that, we'll see. It's not a priority on the agenda going forward unless something else comes forward."

What Pelosi and the other Democratic leaders want to avoid is raising impeachment as an issue that will energize Republican voters. According to many polls, Democrats are just about as excited about the upcoming elections as Republicans.

From Politico.com:

Three-fourths of GOP voters, 75 percent, said they are "very motivated" to vote, as did 72 percent of Democrats. In past midterms, other surveys have showed Republican voters were far more motivated than Democrats were to show up at the polls.

Remember, Michael Cohen's tax (five counts), bank fraud (one count), and payoffs (two counts) case were lateralled by special counsel Robert Mueller to the U.S. Attorney's office for the Southern District of New York - which we have learned to refer to as the SDNY to show that we're insiders.

Who knows what other charges against Cohen - if any - Mueller has reserved for his investigation and what other lines of investigation have been exposed by the execution of those search warrants to poke around Cohen's properties.

Donald Trump's story has changed over and over with regard to these hush-money payoffs but that's not unusual for him. There is video of Trump telling reporters aboard Air Force One that he didn't know anything about the payment to Stormy Daniels:

Q Mr. President, did you know about the $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels?

THE PRESIDENT: No. No. What else?

Q Then why did Michael Cohen make those if there was no truth to her allegations?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, you'll have to ask Michael Cohen. Michael is my attorney. And you'll have to ask Michael Cohen.

Q Do you know where he got the money to make that payment?

THE PRESIDENT: No, I don't know. No.

Nothing that Trump said in that exchange was true but, as we've said many times before, if lying to reporters were actionable, our traffic problems in the Washington metro area would be over.

On the Secret Decoder Ring today: Links to that story about Cohen threatening a reporter, to what macher means, to the poll showing D voters are about as motivated as R voters, and to the video of that exchange aboard Air Force One.

The Mullfoto is of the effects of a major, major rainstorm in DC earlier this week.